By JOEL D. JOSEPH
You will often hear the Republican Party boast that it is the party of Abraham Lincoln. That may have been true 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, but President Lincoln would now be turning over in his grave at what the Republican Party has become. After the 2020 election and its massive voter turnout, the Republican Party’s goal has been to restrict voting, reduce the number of polling places, minimize vote by mail and remove voter ballot drop boxes.
The Republican Party formerly had a proud history of protecting civil rights. Under Republican congressional leadership, the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution—which banned slavery in the United States—passed the Senate in 1864 and the House in 1865; it was ratified in December 1865.
The next year, the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution, mandating equal protection of the laws, granted citizenship to all people born in the United States and provided other rights to citizens, was passed with 93% Republican support.
The 15th Amendment that gave black men the right to vote, was passed with 100% Republican support and became part of the Constitution in 1870.
Ninety-five years later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was jointly sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) and Senate Minority leader Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois). They worked together with Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to draft the bill’s language.
President Lyndon Johnson worried that Southern Democrats would filibuster the legislation, as they opposed other civil rights legislation. Because of the opposition of Southern Democrats, Johnson enlisted Minority Leader Dirksen to help gain Republican support. Dirksen did his job and garnered enough Republican support to outweigh Southern Democratic opposition. Thirty Senate Republicans voted for the Voting Rights Act and only two voted against it, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and John Tower of Texas.
Now we cannot find a single Republican who will vote for either the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or the Freedom to Vote Act. Not even Mitt Romney, nor Lisa Murkowski, nor Susan Collins will vote for either bill.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is proposed legislation that would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; Certain portions of this law were struck down by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. In that case the Supreme Court ruled that it was no longer necessary for Southern states to submit changes in voting laws to the US Attorney General for review. The states of Georgia and Texas are among states that have recently passed laws that make voting more difficult, demonstrating that the Supreme Court was wrong. Southern states still have a tendency to make it difficult for Black Americans to vote, as demonstrated by Georgia and Texas.
The Freedom to Vote Act addresses voter registration and voting access, election integrity and security, redistricting, and campaign finance. The bill expands voter registration (automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (vote-by-mail and early voting). It also limits removing voters from voter rolls and establishes Election Day as a federal holiday.
Republicans are now the anti-civil rights party who want to take away the right to vote by mail, the right to vote early, the right to have election day a federal holiday. A Georgia law makes it a criminal act to provide food or drink to voters waiting in line to vote. In 2018, some voters in Georgia had to wait eight hours in order to exercise their right to vote. Depriving citizens of the right to give those waiting in line to vote a glass of water, or a sandwich, shows how cruel Republican legislators have become. They are not in the party of Abraham Lincoln, nor even in the party of Everett Dirksen.
Joel D. Joseph is a civil rights lawyer and chairman of the Made in the USA Foundation, promoting American-made products. He is the author of “Black Mondays: Worst Decisions of the Supreme Court,” with a foreword by Justice Thurgood Marshall. Email joeldjoseph @gmail.com.
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